


Before Jeongcheol's Home

by chocolatechimkookie



Series: Jeongcheol's Home for Supernatural Children [2]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angels, Angst, Backstory, Banshees, Demons, Dragon Hybrids, Faeries - Freeform, Family, Gen, Hunters, Kid!svt, Kitsune | Lee Jihoon, Magic, Minor Character Death, Multi, Nereids, Poachers, Sad, Shapeshifters - Freeform, Sirens, Supernatural - Freeform, Sylphs, Veela, Violence, Werewolves, im sorry, non-canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 13:03:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17643353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocolatechimkookie/pseuds/chocolatechimkookie
Summary: The stories behind why the children came to Jeongcheol's home.The goodbyes behind the new beginnings.The storms before the silver linings.These are their tales.





	Before Jeongcheol's Home

**Jihoon**

  _“Jihoon, time to eat,”_ his mother grumbles as she nudges at him with her muzzle, awakening him from his slumber on his little nest of leaves and other soft bits of feathers and foliage his mother has scrounged up from the woods surrounding their den. He stumbles a little as he gets up on unsteady legs, wobbly both from sleep and slowly developing muscles. 

Jihoon breathes in his mother’s familiar scent as he positions himself beneath her body to feed, the warm milk filling his belly quickly. His mother sits him down and begins to groom him, licking over his head and muzzle to sort out any unruly bits that might have formed in his sleep. Her nine tails wrap themselves almost unconsciously around his body as she continues on, and Jihoon snuggles further into their furry, poofy warmth for comfort against the lingering chill of winter that has seeped its way into their home.

 _“I caught some foreign scents around the area when I went out this morning,”_ she says as she’s finishing up, the slightest hint of a quiver in her words betraying her attempt at nonchalance. _“You make sure to keep far away from the opening when I’m out today, alright? I won’t be long, just gathering some food for our stores.”_

 _“Yes, Mama,”_ he replies, standing up on his hind legs and leaning his front paws on her shoulder to give her cheek a quick lick of affection. Her usually stoic demeanour drops for the briefest of seconds as she takes one last look behind her right before she makes for the exit of their den, pure unbridled love shining in the liquid silver of her eyes.

 _“Jihoon.”_ she calls back. 

His ears perk up and he tilts his head curiously at her. _“Mama?”_

 _“I love you, Jihoon.”_ she says simply, matter-of-factly.

_“I love you too, Mama.”_

And then she’s gone, off hunting and scavenging for the two of them to get through this winter. But she’ll be back soon, and he’ll return to the comfort of her smell and her warmth before he knows it.

He creeps back to his nest and curls up, wrapping his solitary tail around himself to shield from the cold. Closing his eyes, he wonders what special gift she’ll bring back with her this time for him to play with this time.

 

His mother returns home later than she usually does, fatigue prominent in the drooping of her tails and the hanging of her head. The winter has been harsh on them thus far, despite the magic she uses to bless her hunts. She is digging her teeth into a rat when he awakens, the bits of bloody meat red and clinging to the fur around her mouth.

From the mass of her tails she withdraws a single, perfectly preserved white wildflower, placing it gently at his feet. Her gift, as she never forgets to bring back for him. _“I found this one under a bush down by the river,”_ she says, _“a real fighter it is, just like you, Jihoon.”_

 _“Me?”_ he asks, sniffing cautiously at the white petals.

_“Your siblings were all stillborn, I expected as much due to the difficulty of my gestation, but it was still painful to have to bury my own pups.”_

Jihoon was born during a winter not unlike this one, cold and harsh, especially on a pregnant mother.

 _“But then you came out, the very last one, and the tiniest,”_ she has fondness in her eyes as she looks at him, “ _you shouldn’t have been able to survive but you did, you clung to life and refused to let go even when your siblings all did.”_

She noses at his head, his ears. _“My precious Jihoon, my love.”_

He lets himself be babied by his mother for a while before his stomach growls, demanding for milk. She lets out a sound not unlike a chortle and turns onto her side to let him drink, too exhausted from her unfruitful hunt to stand up for any longer. It’s when he lowers his head to her nipple that he hears it.

Footsteps. 

Despite his young age and weak body, his ears have always been sensitive to even the slightest of sounds. His mother must hear the footsteps too as she quickly leaps to her feet, her fatigue set aside in the face of the danger now lurking outside their den, their _home_.

 _“Jihoon, go and hide in the lower tunnels where I showed you, and don’t come out until I call for you,”_ his mother growls, nudging him in the direction of the small tunnel branch his mother had dug out for him in case of any danger. It will not save him if an intruder floods the den with water or gas, but it will keep him hidden long enough for his mother to draw them away as she has in the past before.

The footsteps grow louder, dead branches crunching under heavy human boots. There are more of them now than he’d first heard, more than he’s ever heard before. _“Mama…”_

 _“Go!”_ she snarls, baring her teeth at him warningly until he yelps in fear and dashes for the tunnel, wiggling his body into the small crevice and scrambling down as fast as he can. He doesn’t go down as deep as he should, his heart pounding too hard in his chest and his limbs freezing up in terror. His mother is alone up there, against so many humans; what if she gets hurt? She’s crawling up towards the opening of their den, ready to protect him against their intruders.

He can help. Her milk has made him stronger than he was before, he can help keep her safe—

A loud growl fills the air and paralyses him, the sheer dominance in the sound shooting ice through his bones far colder than the winter could ever create. There’s the sound of shouting, deep voices he knows belong to human males. There are too many. Too many. His mother is alone. One against many.

His mother is wise and capable and strong but human males are vicious and evil, selfish and ruthless. He knows it was the humans that had killed his father, knows they are the cause for why his mother was left alone that cold winter to fend for herself, why he is the only pup she has instead of many.

One of the males is shouting, words he can’t understand but a tone he does. His mother barks furiously, and Jihoon can hear her nails digging into the frozen earth outside the den as she launches at one of the males, teeth snapping. She must hit her mark as a pained cry follows soon after.

Jihoon forces himself to stay put, knowing just how furious his mother will be later if he doesn’t. 

But then he hears her whine in pain, and then he smells her blood, iron and salt cutting through the damp scent of the earth.

He’s running before he even realises he’s moved, forcing his way back up the tunnel and towards the smell of blood. His mother’s blood.

There’s so much shouting and he’s scared, but his mother is hurt and she always takes care of him when he’s hurt—

 _“Jihoon stay back!”_ his mother barks at him as he’s halfway up the exit tunnel, ready to go and help her. Her voice is weak and strained, far more than it should sound simply from tiredness and cold alone. They’ve _done_ something to her. 

Jihoon has never felt this hot, burning rage in him before, the fire of fury raging so fiercely in his chest that it starts to even feel cold. That is his _mother_.

His mother yelps in pain once more as the sound of a thump echoes, the sound of a human boot colliding with her side. He leaps out of the den without a second thought, his teeth sharp and bared as he dashes towards the nearest male. Jihoon sinks his teeth into the male’s leg as hard as he can, the taste of coppery blood filling his mouth as his canines break delicate human flesh. The male he’s bitten roars in anger and roughly kicks him off, sending him flying into a tree.

There’s blood coating his muzzle and his shoulder flares with pain at the collision with the rough tree bark. He spots his mother surrounded by three of the males, her white fur spotted in red and staining the snow around her. There’s something red and furry sticking up against her side, reeking of something terrible and _unnatural_ that immediately has Jihoon on the defensive.

 _“Jihoon run!”_ his mother sounds so weak, her limbs twitching even as her eyes are fixed on him in utter horror and fear. 

Fear.

Jihoon doesn’t think he’s ever seen his mother afraid.

 _“RUN!”_ she calls out again, eyes darting towards the male he had bitten who is now beginning to make his way towards him, a long, pole-like thing in his hands that stinks of the same artificialness that has now creeped into his mother.

For all of his bravery earlier, Jihoon is now frozen on the spot, unable to do anything but watch as the male draws closer and closer. His mother is screeching at him to run, to go, making so much noise that he doubts anything else residing in the forest hasn’t heard. One of the males standing by her shuts her up with a kick to her head, so hard that it snaps her head back with a sickening _crunch_.

 _“MAMA!”_ he screams, absolute hatred filling him as the male who’d kicked her presses his disgusting boot on top of her head, putting weight down on it ever so slowly that he can see his mother’s eyes bulging out with the pressure of it. The male has reached him and the first press of his thick, smelly fingers against his fur snaps him out of his paralysis, his feet scrambling beneath him to get away but it’s far too late.

The male is stronger than he is and emphasises this by wrapping his fingers around Jihoon’s neck, lifting him into the air to show him off to the others. His limbs flail helplessly in the air, claws reaching for the male’s arm but to no avail.

This is how Jihoon is going to die.

He can’t breathe, not with the way the male is tightening his grip around his fragile, juvenile neck the more he squirms. His vision is beginning to blur at the edges when the male’s fist loosens, the force of his mother’s kitsune magic knocking the male off his feet. The other males are similarly incapacitated around them but Jihoon knows it won’t be long before they’re back to full strength.  
  
A brief glimmer of hope this opportunity has granted him warms up his aching body. “ _Mama get up! Let’s go!”_ he calls out, desperation tinging his voice as his mother’s body remains prone despite this window of a chance for survival they’ve been given.

Hot tears drip to the ground from his mother’s silver eyes, melting the snow beneath her. There is a wrongness in the way her head is shaped, a dip in the round curve of her skull that Jihoon knows shouldn’t be there.

 _“I love you, Jihoon,”_ his mother whispers, her voice soft and broken and full of an unspoken goodbye. _“My precious Jihoon, my lo-“_  

A deafening crack fills the forest, the smell of blood masking everything else Jihoon has ever known. The spot where his mother’s head has just been is now but a splatter of red against the white snow, flecked with bone and bits of squishy sinew not unlike the rat she’d eaten just earlier that evening.

His mother’s head, now nothing more than a pile of broken flesh. It is as if the space she had filled in his heart has been vacated, leaving him empty and hollow as he continues to stare at his mother’s corpse, her last words left unspoken in the air and never to be heard ever again. 

He doesn’t even feel the humans’ hands on him as they grab him roughly from the ground, doesn’t even hear the shouting. All he can think of is how his mother will never again bring him a gift from her hunts, how he will never again be able to burrow into her tails for warmth, how he will never again hear her say that she loves him.

And Jihoon thinks he will never be able to love again either. He thinks that his own heart is amongst the mess of red that was once his mother, broken and never to be put together again.

Just like her. 

 

Jihoon doesn’t know how much time passes, since that sound, since that smell. The hands around him turn from painful to gentle, the voices in the forest going from malicious to kind.

But it doesn’t matter. He is alone. This time there’s no last fighter clinging on to life, no flower blooming in the snow.

It’s just him.

And the flower has been crushed underfoot.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry.
> 
> I just needed the angst, and I thought despite Jeongcheol learning about the kid's backgrounds when they come, sometimes there are things only the children will ever know and hey here we are. This one was a painful one and I apologise, but if you guys are anything like me, then you will certainly enjoy this little bit of angst amidst the fluffiness of Jeongcheol's Home for Supernatural Children. 
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed. Leave a review and some kudos if you like, it really makes my day :)


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